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She wasn't happy. Not anymore.
But she could be, somewhere else.
"I didn't want to be happy anywhere else," she muttered, almost defensively, her tongue coated with sweet mulled wine, her words bitter against the roof of her mouth. "I didn't want to be happy with anyone else."
"Are you?" he asked, less inebriated than her but also less guarded. He toyed with the pendant in his hands— he never listened to her, never truly heard that moonstones and promises tied in strings weren't the custom of her tribe, never fully understood that replacing the necklace felt tantamount to betraying her mother's memory, a mockery of her sacrifice.
She looked into his gray eyes, cloudy with a chance of torrential rain, wide and young and full of tomorrows she couldn't see herself living. The tomorrow he wanted… it was only a dream— a blissful, wonderful, innocent dream that both of them had to wake up from.
“I might be,” she answered, her voice wavering, the emotions tumbling out of her like a waterfall. “I know what I should feel, but I don’t feel it. I know what I should do, but I can’t do it. I know where I should be, and it’s not here. I'm not happy, Aang. I haven't been, for a long time.”
“But— but you’re my forever girl,” he whispered to the pendant, not to her, and she knew it was because he was talking to the illusion, not the truth. “We can make it work— wherever it is you want to go, whatever it is you want to do—”
Already, she’s feeling the crushing, devastating blow this was doing to them, the inevitable rip in the tapestry they’ve woven over the past three years. She’s shredding them to pieces, and part of her— the part that whispered vengeance instead of forgiveness, the part that threatened to destroy all those that came between her and what she wanted, the part that always needed to prove her worth against all the odds stacked against her— it felt vindictive, powerful, and she knew it couldn't be stopped.
“I can’t be your forever girl, Aang,” she said, not unkindly, because no matter how much darkness she had accumulated in her veins, she could still feel his heart slowly breaking in his chest as he closed his eyes, trying to keep an afterimage of the future he wanted seared into his memory.
But he had to know, he deserved to know how much his dream would cost.
“The version of me in your mind— your forever girl, the Katara who pulled you out of the iceberg— she doesn’t exist anymore. I've changed, Aang. I won’t fit into your future the way you want me to, because I can’t be myself in the future you want to build.”
“I don't understand. Was it…” his voice was filled with unshed tears, small and vulnerable and disbelieving, just like when he found out that he was the last of his people, “Was it something I did? Is there any way I can change it?”
Pinpricks of tears smarted at the corner of her eyes, and for a moment, she allowed herself to be part of his fantasy: flying along wherever the wind took him, a flock of children surrounding her and tugging at her skirts, growing old in the tundras of her own home.
It was a nice life.
But it was too small to contain her.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting the air pass through her— within her, then without.
She allowed herself to indulge in her own fantasy: a life filled with twisting roads and forked paths, a life bursting with unknown adventures and mistakes that were completely hers, a life where she finally held the reins and plotted the course— it was daunting, it was terrifying, but it was as breathtaking as the open seas, as mysterious and unpredictable as the ocean.
"There's no way to change it, Aang," she said, spine straight with conviction, mind clear of fog. "Unless you want me to change myself."
"I never want you to be anyone but yourself," he said quickly, finally facing her, his face a mask of grim determination. "Please tell me what to do to fix this, Katara. Please."
She shook her head— to clear her mind of his distraught, haunted eyes; to express the irrefutability of her stance. There was nothing to fix— just as one cannot fix how the tides came and went, or how the sun rose and fell in the horizon. This was simply how things were when they've run their course.
"I'm sorry, Aang," she said fervently, letting the healer in her to mend the wounds that her wolf-warrior self inflicted. "I love you, and I probably always will. My life changed the moment we met, and I'm forever grateful. I haven't had any regrets. But this… going down this road is the one regret that I know I can't live with."
"Is there somebody else?" His voice was rising in fury now; she knew his mind was conjuring every scene that had the scent of betrayal, scouring every memory for a villain he could pin the blame on.
But the villain was her; her and time, coming together and hiding their affair from someone who had yet to discover that with growth came the pain of shedding the layers that did not fit anymore.
“There’s no one else,” she said firmly, closing her eyes, the crux of the matter at the tip of her tongue. “This is my decision. Mine alone.”
"I should get a say in it, too!" he demanded, confusion and hurt and anger coming together in his voice to make the perfect storm. "I'm part of this relationship, Katara!"
"You've had your say for the past three years, Aang!" She was a tsunami now, the earthquake in her core finally unleashed. "Did you even once think to ask what I wanted? Did you ever truly listen to what I had to say? I told you I wasn't ready to get married yet! I told you I wanted to go home and help them rebuild—" There were tears now, tears in her now-open eyes, but she refused to be reduced to a tearbender— "I always told you what I wanted, Aang, but you always brushed me off like what I had to say wasn't important, just because it wasn't 'Avatar stuff.'"
"I—" He pulled back, as though her words were as electric as lightning that he couldn't hold onto. "I didn't know you felt that way."
"Well, I did," she said, a tremble in her voice and in her too-tired bones. "I became your shadow, Aang. You wouldn't even listen when I said that staying with your fan club bothered me. You didn’t listen when I said I wouldn’t play mother to the Air acolytes. You expected me to just stay through it all, without accounting for my own needs or wants. That’s why I can’t be your forever girl, Aang; I don’t want to spend forever overshadowed that way.”
“I can still change!” he cried out, his desperation pulling uselessly at her. “I can stop training Air acolytes, or talking to people who make you uncomfortable, or—”
“But I don’t want you to change, Aang,” she said, all the fire gone from her, “You’re the hope that the world needs. You can change, if you really wanted to, but please, don’t do it for me.”
“But—” There were tears now, tears that she knew would forever haunt her, and she forced herself to look at the damage she’d done, “But, I love you. I would do anything for you.”
There were so many words she could utter— but you belong to the world; I can’t find myself when I’m with you; we didn’t know what we were doing, we were just children playing at life; if you really love me—
“Then let me go, Aang,” she finally said. “Let me go.”